Lightspeed Magazine Issue 36

by Eleanor Arnason

  Lightspeed Magazine

  Issue 36, May 2013

  Table of Contents

  Editorial, May 2013

  The Garden—Eleanor Arnason (ebook-exclusive novella)

  The 5th Wave—Rick Yancey (novel excerpt)

  Interview: Karen Russell

  Interview: Gregory Maguire

  Artist Gallery: Giuliano Brocani

  Artist Spotlight: Giuliano Brocani

  The Man Who Carved Skulls—Richard Parks (fantasy)

  Always, They Whisper—Damien Walters Grintalis (fantasy)

  The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue—Holly Black (fantasy)

  Leaving the Dead—Dennis Danvers (fantasy)

  The Traditional—Maria Dahvana Headley (SF)

  The Missing Metatarsals—Sean Williams (SF)

  Water Finds Its Level—M. Bennardo (SF)

  Interview: On Any Given Day—Maureen F. McHugh (SF)

  Author Spotlight: Eleanor Arnason

  Author Spotlight: Richard Parks

  Author Spotlight: Damien Walters Grintalis

  Author Spotlight: Holly Black

  Author Spotlight: Dennis Danvers

  Author Spotlight: Maria Dahvana Headley

  Author Spotlight: Sean Williams

  Author Spotlight: M. Bennardo

  Author Spotlight: Maureen F. McHugh

  Coming Attractions

  © 2013, Lightspeed Magazine

  Cover Art and artist gallery images by Giuliano Brocani

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  www.lightspeedmagazine.com

  Editorial, May 2013

  John Joseph Adams

  Welcome to issue thirty-six of Lightspeed!

  In case you missed the news last month, Lightspeed is again a Hugo Award finalist for best semiprozine, and your humble editor is again a nominee for best editor, short-form. We’re extremely honored to be nominated again, so please allow me to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for us. Additionally, our resident illustrator, Galen Dara, is up for the Hugo Award for best fan artist—largely, we assume, due to her work illustrating Lightspeed stories. If you’d like to check out all of Galen’s illustrations for Lightspeed, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/tag/illustrated-by-galendara.

  Speaking of awards, this year’s Nebula Awards will be presented at the Nebula Awards Weekend event, May 16-19, in San Jose, CA. Lightspeed has two finalists in the short story category: “Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley and “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu; assistant editor Christie Yant and I will be on hand to cheer them on—so if you’re also going to be there, be sure to find us and say hi!

  In other news, the list of artists to appear in Spectrum 20, the latest edition of the prestigious art anthology series have been selected, and Hugo Award nominee (sounds good, doesn’t it?) Galen Dara is among them. So is Marc Simonetti, who provided our cover for the June 2012 issue. As we were going to e-press with this issue, which specific pieces of art they’d be reprinting was not yet revealed; all we know for sure is both Galen and Marc will have their artwork featured in the anthology. Congrats to them both!

  With all that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:

  We have original science fiction by Maria Dahvana Headley (“The Traditional”) and M. Bennardo (“Water Finds Its Level”), along with SF reprints by Maureen F. McHugh (“Interview: On Any Given Day”) and Sean Williams (“The Missing Metatarsals”).

  Plus, we have original fantasy by Damien Walters Grintalis (“Always, They Whisper”) and Dennis Danvers (“Leaving the Dead”), and fantasy reprints by Holly Black (“The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue”) and Richard Parks (“The Man Who Carved Skulls”).

  For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “The Garden” by Eleanor Arnason, and of course we have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with Gregory Maguire and Karen Russell.

  Our issue this month is again sponsored by our friends at Orbit Books. This month, look for The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty. You can find more from Orbit—including digital short fiction and monthly ebook deals—at www.orbitbooks.net.

  It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And remember, there are several ways you can sign up to be notified of new Lightspeed content:

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  Before I go, just a reminder that our custom-built ebookstore I told you about last month is now up and running. So if you’d like to purchase an ebook issue, or if you’d like to subscribe directly from us, please visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in both epub and mobi format.

  And don’t worry—all of our other purchasing options are still available, of course; this is just one more way you can buy the magazine or subscribe. You can, for instance, still subscribe via Amazon.com or from our friends at Weightless Books. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe to learn more about all of our subscription options.

  Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!

  John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Oz Reimagined, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the editor of Nightmare Magazine and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

  The Garden

  Eleanor Arnason

  There was a boy who belonged to the Atkwa lineage. Like most of his family, he had steel gray fur. In the case of his relatives, the color was solid. But the boy’s fur was faintly striped and spotted. In dim light this wasn’t visible. In sunlight his pelt looked like one of the old pattern-welded swords that hung in his grandmother’s greathouse and were taken outside rarely, usually to be polished, though sometimes for teaching purposes, when adult male relatives were home. Not that anyone used swords in this period, except actors in plays. But children ought to learn the history of their family.

  The boy’s pelt was due to a recessive gene, emerging after generations, since the Atkwa had not gone to a spotted family for semen in more than two hundred years. This was not due to prejudice. Unlike humans, the hwarhath find differences in color more interesting than disturbing. Their prejudices lie in other directions.

  It was circumstance and accident that kept the Atkwa solid gray. They lived in a part of the world where this was the dominant coloration; and—being a small and not especially powerful family—they did not look to distant places when arranging breeding contracts.

  As a toddler, the boy was forward and active, but not to an extraordinary degree. At the age of eight or so, he lengthened into a coltish child, full of ener
gy, but also prone to sudden moods of thoughtfulness. These worried his mother, who consulted with her mother, the family matriarch, a gaunt woman, her fur frosted by age, her big hands twisted by joint disease.

  “Well,” the matriarch said after listening. “Some men are thoughtful. They have to be, if they’re going to survive in space, with no women around to do their thinking.”

  “But so young?” the mother asked. “He spends hours watching fish in a stream or bugs in a patch of weeds.”

  “Maybe he’ll become a scientist.” The matriarch gave her daughter a stern look. “He’s your only boy. He’s been strange and lovely looking from birth. This has led you to pay too much attention and to worry without reason. Straighten up! Be solid! The boy will probably turn out well. If he doesn’t, he’ll be a problem for our male relatives to handle.”

  At ten, the boy discovered gardening—by accident, while following a tli that had come out of the nearby woods to steal vegetables. The sun was barely up. Dew gleamed on the vegetation around his grandmother’s house. The air he drew into his mouth was cool and fragrant.

  The tli, a large specimen with strongly marked stripes, trundled over his grandmother’s lawn, its fat, furry belly gathering dew like a rag wiping moisture off something bright. A metal blade maybe, the boy thought. A dark trail appeared behind the animal, and it was this the boy followed at a safe distance. Not that a tli is ever dangerous, unless cornered, but he didn’t want to frighten it.

  The animal skirted the house, entering the garden in back. There the tli began to pillage, a messy process with much (it seemed to the boy) unnecessary destruction. He ought to chase it away. But he was hit, suddenly and with great force, by the beauty of the scene in front of him. The perception was like a blade going into his chest. Don’t think of this as a figure of speech, exaggerated and difficult to believe. There are emotions so intense that they cause pain, either a dull ache or a sudden sharp twinge. Under the influence of such an emotion, one’s heart may seem to stop. One may feel wounded and changed as one is changed by a serious injury.

  This happened to the boy when he didn’t, as yet, understand much of what he felt. If he’d been older, he might have realized that most emotions go away, if one ignores them. Instead, he was pierced through by beauty. For the rest of his life he remembered how the garden looked: a large rectangular plot, edged with ornamental plants, their leaves—red, purple, yellow, and blue—like the banners of a guard in a military ceremony.

  Inside this gaudy border were the vegetables, arranged in rows. Some grew on poles or trellises. Others were bushes. Still others rose directly from the soil as shoots, fronds, clusters of leaves. The variety seemed endless. While the garden’s border was brightly colored, most of these plants were shades of green or blue. Yet they seemed if anything more lovely and succulent, beaded with dew and shining in the low slanting rays of the sun.

  So it was, on a cool summer morning, the air barely stirring, that Atkwa Akuin fell in love—not with another boy, as might have been expected, if not this year, then soon—but with his grandmother’s garden.

  He spent the rest of that summer in the plot, helping the two senior female cousins who did most of the house’s gardening. In the fall, he turned soil, covered beds with hay, trimmed what needed trimming and planted chopped-up bits of root. Black and twisted, they looked dead to him. But they’d send up shoots in the spring, his cousins promised.

  Akuin’s mother watched doubtfully. The boy was settling down to a single activity. That had to be better than his former dreaminess. But she would have been happier if he’d taken up a more boyish hobby: riding tsina, fishing in the nearby river, practicing archery, playing at war.

  “Give him more time,” said Akuin’s grandmother. “Boys are difficult, as I know.”

  She’d raised three. One had died young in an accident. Another had died in space, killed in the war that had recently begun. The enemy—humans, though their name was not yet known—had come out of nowhere in well-armed ships. Almost everything about them remained hidden in darkness as complete as the darkness from which they’d emerged. But no one could doubt their intentions. The first meeting with them had ended in violence; so had every encounter since.

  The matriarch’s third son was still alive and had reached the rank of advancer one-in-front. This should have given her satisfaction, but the two of them had never gotten along. Akuin’s uncle rarely came home for a visit. The matriarch lavished her attention on her one daughter, her nieces, and their children.

  Now she said, folding her twisted hands, “Maybe Akuin will become a gardener in a space station. Such people are useful. An army needs more than one kind of soldier.”

  When he was fifteen, Akuin went to boarding school, as do all boys of that age. In these places they learn to live without women and among males who belong to other lineages. This becomes important later. A boy who can’t detach himself from family and country is little use in space. In addition, the boys complete their education in the ordinary hwarhath arts and sciences, the ones learned by both females and males; and they begin their education in the specifically male art and science of war.

  Akuin’s school was on the east coast of his continent, in an area of sandy dunes and scrub forest: poor land for gardening. Nonetheless, the school had a garden. Botany is a science, and horticulture is an art.

  It was on the landward side of the school complex, sheltered by buildings from the prevailing wind. Akuin found it the day after he arrived. To the west was a row of dunes, with the afternoon sun standing just above them. Long shadows stretched toward the garden. The gardener—a man with a metal leg—moved slowly between the rows of plants, bending, examining, picking off bugs, which he pressed between the fingers of his good hand. His other arm hung at his side, clearly damaged and not recently. It had shrunk ’til little remained except black fur over bone.

  Akuin thought he was unnoticed. But the gardener turned suddenly, straightened, and glared at him with yellow eyes. Akuin waited motionless and silent. He might be a little odd, but there was nothing wrong with his manners.

  “You’re new,” said the man finally. “Where from?”

  Akuin told him.

  “Inland. Why aren’t you on the beach? Or exploring the school? We have a fine museum, full of things which former students have sent back.”

  “I like gardens,” Akuin said.

  The man glared at him a second time, then beckoned, using his good hand. The boy came forward into the garden.

  The man’s name, it turned out, was Tol Chaib. He’d gone to this school years before, gone into space, then come back to teach. He said nothing more about himself in that first encounter. Instead he talked about the difficulty of growing healthy plants in sand. Partly, he said, he worked to change the soil. The school provided him with compost and manure, more than was needed. “If there’s anything certain about boys and tsina, it’s that they will produce plenty of fertilizer.” Some of the excess went into lawns and ornamental borders. The rest was sold to local farmers.

  Mostly, he found plants that fit the local soil and weather. “No other strategy works well. This is why it’s so difficult to grow our plants on other planets. The light is different; so is the invisible radiation. The soil has the wrong minerals or minerals in the wrong proportions. A plant always grows best on its home planet, unless—as sometimes happens—it proliferates unnaturally in a strange place.”

  Akuin had been feeling lonely and afraid. How could he survive five years in school? At the end of his school years stood a fate even worse. Few hwarhath men remain on the home planet. From 20 to 80, their lives are spent in space, exploring and preparing to meet the enemies who will inevitably appear. The universe is a dangerous place, and the hwarhath are a careful species. So the men go into space, looking for trouble, while their female relatives stay home, raising children and practicing the arts of peace.

  Sixty years in metal corridors, with only brief visits home. Hah! The prospect was
terrible.

  Now, listening to Tol Chaib, he felt a little comfort. Maybe he’d be able to survive school. He could certainly learn much from the crippled man.

  The school had a curriculum, of course. There were classes, labs, field trips, military exercises. Most of what Akuin did was required. But when he could decide for himself, he went to Tol Chaib’s garden or to the greenhouses where Chaib kept flowers growing all winter.

  This was a comfort on days when snow lay over the campus and a knife-wind blew off the ocean. The glass walls were covered by condensed moisture, making the world outside invisible. Inside was damp, warm air; the smell of dirt and growing things; flowers that blossomed as brightly as a campfire; the gardener’s dry, harsh voice.

  At first he told Akuin about the plants around them, then about the gardening he’d done in space. Gardens up there—Tol Chaib waved at the ceiling—are necessary for five reasons. Men are healthier if they eat fresh fruit and vegetables. The plants help keep air breathable by removing carbon dioxide and providing oxygen. “This can be done by inorganic chemical reactions or by microbes, but a garden is more pleasant and produces air with a better aroma.”

  In addition, Tol Chaib said, every station and ship is supposed to be self-sufficient. “Ships become lost. A station might be cut off, if the war goes badly. If this happens, the men on board will need ways to provide themselves with air, food, and medicine.”

  “You’ve given me three reasons for gardens in space,” Akuin said. “Health, clean air, and self-sufficiency. What are the other two?”

  “Joy,” the gardener said, “which is not usually produced by vats of microbes or inorganic chemical reactions; and hope that we will finally come home.”

  Toward the end of winter, Akuin learned how Tol Chaib had been injured.

  He’d been the foremost gardener in a small station designed for research rather than war. A supply ship arrived, and the pilot made a mistake while docking—several mistakes, since he panicked when he realized the coupling of ship and station was going badly. The station’s outer skin had been punctured. “There was a sudden loss of pressure.” Tol Chaib grinned. “The air lock system in my section of the station was new and had improvements, which did not work as planned.”